


Chimera

by stardust_made



Category: Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Angst, Epistolary, M/M, Pining, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-30
Updated: 2011-12-30
Packaged: 2017-10-28 12:34:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/307922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stardust_made/pseuds/stardust_made
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Holmes writes a predestined letter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Chimera

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tweedisgood](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tweedisgood/gifts).



  
My dear Watson,

It is with reluctance that I begin this letter to you, for there can be no doubt regarding its fate. It will follow into oblivion all the other letters I have written to you over the past two years, the only difference between them their means of demise. Some I have burnt, Watson—with a heavy heart, but knowing only too well that one must strive to leave no evidence of one’s deeds and even less of one’s thoughts.

My reluctance stems from an observation I have made of my own person. With each letter’s destruction, it has been as if I lose whatever little connection to you that I have conjured up. I am torn between dismay at my suffering after a mere chimera and my need to honour what I know is fact. I do suffer, my dear fellow—that is a fact. Were I a vainer man, I might have taken some comfort in the knowledge that no one shall ever learn about it. But as you know, I do not concern myself with what people think of me; therefore to my mind it is all the same whether others should ever find me out. For my own part, I reason that mine is not a weakness of the mind, not a general affliction that has corrupted my mental faculties and taken away both my life’s work and values. Rather, my suffering is a singular occurrence. It is the one exception that confirms the rule, because I continue to be the same Holmes that you knew: A man who has neither time nor natural disposition for those emotions that throw human beings into passionate unions or heinous crimes—and on occasion both.

Let me make sense to you—or rather, since you are never to read this, let me satisfy my own need for order and logic. I speak of the suffering I have noticed in myself each time a letter meets its fatal end. I find it harder and harder to begin them, Watson, knowing I will kill them afterwards. I am slowly becoming wary that the day is near when I shan’t be able to get rid of a letter, and there will be something material to lodge its burden in my mind, never to leave me in peace for fear it should be found or worse—read by you.

It is the possibility of your discovering my other suffering that brings the threat so close. That other suffering is bigger than the first and for all intents and purposes its parent. I should not think your friend would have been touched by the ashes of a letter or, indeed, have written it in the first place, had it not been for the grander predicament he finds himself in.

My dear John. I am writing this particular letter on one of the quietest nights I have ever had. There is some peace in it, but no great measure. It is not the silent night of songs, but that of the desert. I’m sitting by my small fire, alone, not a living soul within a radius of five miles. The air is dry, and there is only one thing I miss more than the cold, damp climate of England. By day I look at the stretches of yellow sand as far as the eye can reach, and find myself presented with the most preposterous mirages: those of gray fog and dirty stone buildings. I am certain that fellow desert wanderers would have me lynched for not paying my respect to that mighty oppressor, the heat. They would think it far more appropriate for me to hallucinate an oasis. I understand it is the done thing in these conditions. But I could correct them. I do have fantastical visions that bow to tradition somewhat more. At midday I do try to find a spot of shade. I then close my eyes, Watson, and picture the lush green of the Surrey countryside. That charming afternoon I spent there when we were in the middle of the affair involving your friend Percy Phelps—it has quite imprinted itself on my mind. It is there and then that I often imagine myself.

There is one thing, quite telling, that sets it aside as a fantasy and not a mere memory. You are with me, my dear, dear friend. Like you are with me now and every moment I am awake. When I don’t write to you, I talk to you in my head. I share, I explain, I sometimes ask for your opinion, and sometimes hear you answer, too. The mind of a genius—your words, not mine—has its advantages, and I flatter myself that your replies are accurate, true to what my Watson would say even down to the last exclamation. On occasion you are silent and I can picture your face, caught up in rapture, listening to the ramblings of a man you have made a career of praising too highly.

For he is a fool, Watson—among the grandest of them, have no doubt. A fool who let himself—

**Author's Note:**

> Beta by the fantastic [](http://disastrolabe.livejournal.com/profile)[**disastrolabe**](http://disastrolabe.livejournal.com/). My first and so far only canon piece, written for [](http://tweedisgood.livejournal.com/profile)[**tweedisgood**](http://tweedisgood.livejournal.com/) whose stories are an inspiration.


End file.
